We have an older dog who is on her way out 
and I know we’ll soon have to make arrangements for her remains. I think we’re leaning towards having her cremated but she is Mr Johnson’s dog so I’m leaving the final decision up to him.
What do you Dopers do with your pet’s remains?
We’ve had many pets (fish, hamsters, turtles, cats, dogs, etc.), and what we’ve usually done was if they died at home, we usually buried them in the back yard. If they had to be put down at the veterinarian’s office, we’ve let them take care of the remains. My wife gets very attached to our pets (dogs and cats primarily) and the idea of taking the body of our pet home after the vet has put them asleep seemed as if it’d be too traumatic for my kids and my wife.
We have two great danes now. I don’t know if the same rules will apply when their health starts deteriorating. I’M very attached to both of them, and the idea of digging a hole in the backyard for an hour or two with one of them lying there might be too much for me to handle.
We have our dog’s ashes in a box in the closet while we try to figure out what to do. (it’s been about two years). We’ll probably scatter them this summer on the beach. Our beloved cat was put down at the vet’s office about two months ago, we let them take care of the remains.
I recently (May 26) returned from a business trip to find one of my beloved dogs dead in his cooling off spot. He was brachycephalic and I think got overheated until his airway closed up; he basically snorted his poor little self to death.
Anyway, I had him cremated and requested his ashes back. They are now in a beautiful carved wooden box on my mantle, with his collar and a funny picture of him next to it. If I ever figure out how to get the box open, I will sprinkle some of his ashes in his favorite pee spots out in the backyard.
I do not bury my critters because I am a gardener. Years from now, I could be digging up a new flower bed or something and come across somebody’s bones and that would freak me the fuck out. I’ve already come across some cat bones at a rented house when I was digging a hole for a new plant. It was creepy. I’m not doing that to my own critters.
I’m afraid that after dying at home after thirteen years of faithful service our dog suffered the ultimate humiliation. As gently as I could (which was not very), I stuffed her body into a garbage bag, loaded it into the trunk of my car, and drove it to the vet where an assistant loaded it onto a cart and walked away.
Ah, shit. I’m gonna make sure that I get cremated.
A couple years ago when I still lived with my parents, my old dog got out of the yard and was hit by a car. My boss actually found her and brought her back home on the tailgate of his pickup. (Nice boss, huh?) He helped me put her in a trash bag and into the chest freezer until later that day when my parents came home. Then we buried her in the backyard and put a large stone as a grave marker.
Mr J and I are currently renting a house so there’s no way we’d bury any of our dogs in the yard. Plus our current dogs are all greyhounds - much bigger than my old Jack Russell.
I buried only one ferret, the rest were group-cremated with other pets and sprinkled on the grounds of a local pet cemetery, which was one of the levels of service offered by our vet. The one we buried went in his sleep on a Sunday, with the vet’s office not open, so my husband dug a deep hole in the backyard, we laid in the body and put a little dirt down, then placed in a large flagstone, lots more dirt on top of that, and then a flagstone on top. It was located in kind of a back, awkward corner of the garden beds on the property, so anyone who comes after would not be very likely to turn up some little bones. We felt a bit bad when his little buddy had to be euthanized, and we opted for the usual mass cremation/scattering for her; symbolically it would have been nice for them to be “together.”
Funny story.
One day, way back when, I came home from work one day, and my mother says, “Sit down, I have something to tell you.” Turns out my dog had died. Not surprising because he was up there in years, but she tells me that he looked at her, took a really deep breath and keeled over dead, and she put him in a cardboard box on the porch, not knowing what else to do.
So I decided to bury him out under the tree where he used to relax in the shade, because he would have liked that. He was a small dog, so I dig a hole about a foot and a half wide by about two and a half feet, and about four feet deep.
It all looks ready, so I go and get the cardboard box, bring it beside the hole I dug, open it up, and take a look.
She didn’t even lay him out normally. He’s rigored into an oval shape.
Now you don’t know futility until you try to bury an oval dog in a rectangle hole. I swear to God I must have looked like that guy in Animal House trying to figure out how to get the dead horse out of Dean Wormer’s office…I look at the hole, then I look at the dog, back again at the hole, back again at the dog…
…and then, “Sonovabitch, I’ve gotta round out the *%$%#)(^% hole!”, which was harder than it looked, as it was now starting to get dark.
After all was said and done, I told my mother that if I died and she was around, for Crissakes lay me out in a lying position – the morturist would be so grateful if she would do so.
I’ve had a total of 3 cats for whom I had to make this decision. In the first 2 cases, I let the vet dispose of the remains. In the third case, my husband buried her in our own yard. The first 2 cases occurred before I was married, living in an apartment, with no yard of my own.
I should mention that I’m not one to be much attached to earthly remains. I treasure my memories of loved ones I have lost (including those 3 cats), but don’t feel any need to keep urns on the mantel or even visit gravestones.
So sorry about you dog, Mrs Johnson. 
We just got our dog Daisy’s ashes back yesterday, which is sad, but strangely comforting. I plan to take her with me when I, um, …go.
I’ve always opted to have the vet take care of it. They arranged for group cremation. I always believe that when whatever brain activity actually makes my dog a dog leaves its body, nothing else remains and i wouldn’t be comfortable with burying my dog or keeping its ashes.
Personally, I’d opt for cremation or nothing at all. I defer to the wishes of others, which has always been burial in the yard. In my neck of the woods(suburbs), burial is frowned upon by local zoning ordinances. I dig a very deep hole, up to neck level. Then I go to the nursery and bring home some flowers or bushes. It’s merely a ruse. Last time I had to wait until all the nosy neighborhood kids, including mine, went to school. I wheeled that 80# carcass over to the hole and dumped it in with her favorite toy. The hole was filled in and plantings marked the top. The memories live on.
Al Bundy, I’m smiling at the thought of your somber visit to the plant nursery.
I picked other.
When my friend’s horse (who was my “heart” horse) shattered his leg in the pasture and was PTS on the spot, she left it for the barn manager to handle, and I’m pretty sure they just called the rendering company.
When it was time for my first cat to go because of kidney failure, a dear friend came to my house, we anesthetized her with ketamine IM (we were both working for a large animal vet near her farm), she drove Tiger the 5 minutes to our work, a vet there euthanized Tiger, and my friend buried her on her farm.
Sorry about your dog. I just made the appointment to euthanize my second and last childhood cat - we got her and Tiger when I was 5 - tomorrow. Afterward, I am going to take her to my current work and do a necropsy (work is too far away to make her do the car ride), then I guess bury her on my friend’s farm with her sister.
In 10 years of marriage we had to put down five older cats and one kitten. For most of them, we let the vets take care of the remains. One cat was diabetic and need shots daily but outlived the others of his generation to the age of 19. We probably hung onto to him longer than we should have. Because he was extra-special, we had him cremated at a place where we could actually hold a service of sorts (it was just the two of us) while the remains were in the oven.
I’ve only had to deal with one but I had the vet come to put her to sleep at home. When they left, they took her with them. Absolutely broke my heart.
I had my dog cremated. She was put down at my house (worked out best for her since she hated vet visits and I didn’t want to put her through that for her final minutes). Burying her in my backyard wasn’t allowed. Plus, I’m kind of lazy and digging a hole deep enough wasn’t something I would have wanted to do anyway.
The cremation service I used (the first one that said they could come on such short notice since my dog went downhill very quickly) only offered individual cremation.
I spread her ashes under her favorite tree when the neighbors weren’t watching (it’s not like there were many of them anyway: she was a small dog). I didn’t do that for sentimental reasons. Instead, I just didn’t want to keep the ashes around.
I grew up in the country and we always buried our dead animals (not all of them technically pets) on our own property. Took us all day to dig a hole big enough to properly bury a sheep. The only dead animals we didn’t bury we ate.
In early 2008, our beloved Mr. Charles T. Cat was suddenly afflicted with saddle thrombosis. There is no effective treatment for the condition, as we discovered first from our vet and then from the LSU Vet School’s emergency clinic. We decided to donate his little body to the vet school for study. We both felt that something good could come out of that horrible night by letting the students learn from his body. I realize some people might not feel the same, and I was actually surprised I felt so comforted by it.
I don’t think I’d be comfortable burying any of our pets on our property. We might not be here forever. Also, none of our animals are “outside” animals, so it seems weird for them.
As I just noted in the thread on the Apparently Immortal Goldfish, Chad has demonstrated that seven years was enough, and has given up the ghost. We buried him in the backyard tonight.
We had two cats at one time. Cat number one had a problem with urinary tract infection, poor devil. Had an $800 operation and some years later had yet another UTI requiring a trip to the emergency veterinarian on Superbowl night. Long story short, he had to be euthanized. I could not bear the thought of bringing his dead body home, and anyway, there was deep snow on the ground. So I left him with the vet to dispose of. … Cat number two was our beloved Himalayan who was 18, slowly dying, couldn’t eat, drink, or see. So we had him euthanized and made arrangements to have him cremated. Picked up his ashes packed in a pretty little tin and we dug a hole out by the birdbath and had a little ceremony. We all read passages from “The Himalayan Cat, a complete owner’s guide”, sprinkled a handful of catnip over the tin, covered it up, and had After The Funeral Macaroni and Cheese.
When I went to pick up the cat’s ashes at the local pet cemetery, I was surprised to go in and see a whole room full of animal coffins, all sizes, some quite elaborate and expensive. I think the place actually would hold a wake for your deceased pet. :eek:
I thought that only happened in movies, i.e., “Sunset Boulevard”, but the office worker said they sold a lot of pet coffins…